Call of Duty (CoD), a video game series published by Activision, has jumped into the murky waters of AI-powered censorship after revealing a new partnership with AI voice moderation tool Modulate ToxMod. This will be built-in to the newest CoD game, Modern Warfare 3, which will be released on November 10th this year. Currently, it is being trailed on Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Warzone. It will be used for flagging ‘foul-mouthed’ players and identifying hate speech, racial or homophobic language, misogyny and any ‘misgendering’. Players do not have the option to prevent the AI listening in.
As well as being the latest development in online censorship, this can also be seen an escalation of the war on men. The majority of CoD players are male and the game is often played after a hard day’s work, late at night after a visit to the pub and involves a great deal of banter. The AI could be very busy, given the nature of the game, which is confrontational, can be played by opposing teams and can also be played across international boundaries. One of my uncles was among the top 100 players in the world and the language emanating from his bedroom was, um, ‘choice’.
ToxMod can listen into players’ voice chats and delve into the tone and intent of the text used in chats – including its emotion, volume and prosody – by using sophisticated machine-learning models. The developers claim that their aim is to crack down on foul language and ‘toxic behaviour’. But why should players trust ToxMod’s definition of what is ‘toxic’? Many will suspect that a real motive is to impose on gamers a woke vision of an ‘inclusive’ society sanitised from all forbidden thoughts. What’s next – microphones under our seats at football stadiums?
We are, sadly, becoming used to having AI spy on us. This already happens routinely with WeChat, a platform used by huge numbers in China and also widely across the West. TikTok, a video-sharing app that allows users to create and share short-form videos on any topic — another Chinese platform — admitted to spying on U.S. users at the end of last year and this has led to discussions about the app being banned. Snapchat introduced its own AI chatbot in April this year, which knows your location – even though the app promised that it didn’t – asks personal questions and always enquires about your day.
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 – which too many these days seem to mistake for a manual – the Government used telescreens to monitor and spy on the population by distributing both information conveyors and surveillance devices in public and private areas. ToxMod has all the marks of yet another Orwellian prophecy coming to pass.
Call of Duty is a game designed for adults. In a free country, adults should reasonably expect privacy when engaging in conversations in their own homes.
And what, we should ask, is ToxMod going to do with all the data it collects on players’ ‘hate speech’ and ‘toxic behaviour’? At the moment it’s unclear, but don’t be surprised to see figures emerging in the coming months on the number of players facing bans for ‘hate speech’ as a result of their CoD conversations.
It’s hard to imagine any of this going down well with players. Will CoD find itself the latest victim of ‘go woke, go broke’ as players abandon a game that presumes to monitor their private conversations and inflict penalties on them for what it overhears?
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“won’t the British Museum eventually become an empty building”
We can fill it with native British stuff.
I’m sick of hearing others whinge about all this “stolen” stuff. Let them have it all back, as long as we don’t have to listen to their whining.
…but Restitution! Compensation! Erm… Funding for appropriate display facilities! Insurance!
Tell you what, you look after them for a while longer, eh?
2054: The British Museum has been condemned for desecrating the graves of pre-white Britons and plundering treasure hoards that were clearly deposited by their true owners for other reasons, concentrating them all in London. This has led to calls for all these artifacts to be returned to their original sites, or in the case of Roman artifacts, returned to Italy.
Lol, yes, truth is stranger than fiction these days
3D scan them to the tiniest detail and ‘print’ replicas. Then give the originals back.
Display the replicas.
When the Greeks lose/break/sell the originals update the display to tell the world what happened.
We arer hardly in a position to hold anything of value given that the country has turned into the cheapest whore on the block and I mean the cheapest. People in poor countries laugh about how they don’t have to worry about their criminal classes anymore because they will just send them to England where they will be mopped up for cheap labour. Trust me you are in no position to negotiate anything.
The soul of a nation has been torn away. And it is beginning to go into a slow decay, to paraphrase Bob Dylan and Murder Most Foul.
You are losing all of your best people because you are too weak to acknowledge your own status. You have to do something about this.
Send them back to the Greeks, they seem to be in bad condition anyway, probably not worth a lot of money…
My understanding of the marbles may be wrong, but I thought Earl of Elgin purchased these articles to save them from being used as ballast for roads being built by the Turks, who at the time were in control of Greece as part of the Ottoman Empire. Legally purchased in an attempt to at least save something of historical value for future generations. If it hadn’t been for Earl of Elgin and his foresight and money to purchase and save these articles, they would have been lost to civil constructions decades ago.
Stop whinging and be grateful that someone had some constructive action and foresight, not emotional incontinence.
With the current migration surges, it looks like they may be back, and they can then say we can keep the Elgin Marbles.
“won’t the British Museum eventually become an empty building”
they’ll fill t with modern woke trash that is a mockery of art.
Yaawwn
sorry, couldn’t care less!